issue_comments: 260116620

Code is read in text form more often than it is interactively explored.

Good point, in that case explicit namespacing indeed helps.

At Google, our Python style guide actually prohibits writing import like from xarray import Dataset. You have to write import xarray or import xarray as xr and always use the namespace.

A module-level namespace has nothing to do with the class namespace, but I see you try to tie them, which makes sense in relationship with the argument about reading code in text form. However, that may not be clear for Python programmers as those namespaces are not tied in reality, better mention it in the docs. BTW, if you are enforcing some specific style guide, please note that in the docs. And I hope you strike the right balance between style complacency and universality.

xarray objects are already non-threadsafe, in the same way that the built-in list and dict are not threadsafe. I don't see how caching attributes changes this. You can choose whether or not to save state on the accessor (and of course, generally it would be better not to).

My problem with non-functional paradigms lies more in the apply, map... paradigms which accessors don't fit into than thread safety.

Finally, I'll note that we also have the .pipe method (e.g., array.pipe(square)), so if you just want functions that you can call with method chaining syntax, you don't even need to write an accessor at all.

That is indeed a good alternative, just not sure my colleagues will like the transition from sig.lowpass(0.2).multiply(3) to sig.pipe(xdsp.lowpass, 0.2).pipe(np.multiply, 3). A benefit of pipe is that methods can be tab-completed from namespaces (useful for interactive usage) and that any compatible function can be used, not just registered methods. Perhaps I will suggest DataArray.__call__ = DataArray.pipe (maybe that could be added in xarray ? should I make an issue for that?) which would make it quite convenient to write only sig(xdsp.lowpass, 0.2)(np.multiply, 3) which is almost the same in terms of chars written and has quite clear syntax (calling a signal with a function argument applies the function to it).